Yesterday I met up with my most sorted friend Katrin. Katrin is married, living in a lovely flat in Kew, with a really interesting and well paid job. I had always assumed that she and her husband would follow the ‘natural’ next step and buy their own home in the next couple of years. Completely unprompted on my part (no really!) she started to question the pressure she was feeling to get onto the housing ladder.
- Our obsession with owning a home in this country is just not normal
- Buying a home isn’t necessarily a safe or sensible investment
- There are benefits and downsides to owning a home and to renting that are different, not worse or better
- At the moment they can afford somewhere bigger and better located if they rent rather than buy
- They can save money if they continue to rent
- If they buy they will have to lock all of their equity up in the home
- When they do buy it won't just be about a financial investment, but because they want to settle, re-orientate their lives to family or because its the perfect place for them in the right location.
From the outside Katrin seems like the perfect candidate to climb up on the housing ladder. The fact that she is rejecting it puts into question the idea that owning a home is necessarily desirable, even to those who could comfortably afford it. If other people feel the same way, and the tide turns away from home ownership as the default tenure type, do we need a different policy response?
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